About this Item
Size of binding: 2 3/4" x 5", v, 160pp.; fine, engraved frontispiece by C. Boily, featuring a flying Cupid with arrow, three putti with hunting horns & dogs against a wooded background, engraved title, floral borders. Page height: 4 11/16"; text features various small printer's ornaments, borders, & is in a very small, but clear type. Near miniature, pocket-size edition of this classic. Bound in full, dark green, straight-grain morocco, with 5 gilt lines & title on spine & single line borders around margins of covers, broken line border on cover edges, leaf-design border dentelles; all edges gilt; with headbands, pink silk book-marker bound in at begininng of Algarotti work; marbled paper endpapers; fore-edge painting/decoration features a grotesque, Renaissance-style mask, surrounded by similar, colored floral type arabesques. Colors are still quite sharp, when this piece is correctly (but carefully) fanned open. Binding is unsigned but looks continental, rather than English, ca. 1800. Spine ends & cover corners/edges show slight rubbing or wear, with some of the green leather surface worn off & a few small similar rubs to the spine, outer hinges, small dark spot to fore-edge; a few tan spots to frotispiece margins, text. A very unusual type of earlier fore-edge painting, here with the understated neo-classical binding, given a more gothic/grotesque look, which an earlier owner has described by penciling on first flyleaf: "Allegorical fore-edge painting". (Italian text). Seller Inventory # ABE-168283422
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